The next morning we had to take the public bus across the border into Cambodia. We were imagining the worst – giant tuk-tuks filled with chickens and pigs – but were pleasantly surprised when an air-conditioned bus drove us the 6 hours it took to get from Saigon to Phnom Penh.
The landscape in Cambodia was vastly different from Vietnam – the green rice fields and trees changed into a barren, brown, dusty landscape almost immediately, and the higher level of poverty, especially child beggars, was exceedingly obvious. And our bus driver honked his horn less.
We arrived in time for $1 cocktails at a local rooftop bar, enjoyed divine Kmer food (similar to Thai before they introduced a lot of their spices and chilli) before visiting another incredibly awesome bar called ‘Elsewhere’ that had wooden platforms with cushions where you sat within a rainforst garden filled with fairy lights. Later we spruced ourselves up to go clubbing at a local club called ‘The Heart of Darkness’ and worked up a sweat, dancing off dinner until 3am.
The next morning we slept in, ate lunch and decided we wouldn’t see any temples that day as we would have two full days at Angkor Wat. We also couldn’t see the palace as the King was in town (when he is in town the whole place is lit up with fairy lights. How can you not love a country that puts fairy lights on everything? It’s my kind of place) so we visited the markets before our visit to the Genocide Prison and Killing Fields that afternoon.
The afternoon was an education, certainly. The torture that the Khmer Rouge put the people through before killing them was not only shocking because of it’s atrociousness – all educated people and their entire families were killed – but because the Pol Pot regime encouraged the worst kind of civil war and seemed to simply want to rid the country of it’s own population – kids killing their parents, soldiers of 10 or 12 years old killing other soldiers.
We were taken through the toture cells that hadn’t been cleaned, blood still present on the floor, and photos of those totured to tell Pol Pot what they knew about educated people in their village, or where there families were hiding filled the walls. At the killing fields, one thousand skulls sat atop a Buddist temple in front of the fields where millions and millions were slaughtered – teeth, bones and cloth still visible through the rubble. There was one grave just for babies.
The worst thing was that it was only 25-odd years ago, that the US, Australia and NZ funded this regime under the guise of preventing communism so they could protect their capitalist back-pockets, that Pol Pot himself sat on the UN Council until the early 1990’s and died of malaria before ever facing trial for the atrocities that he created, that to this day the UN will never come out and say what Pol Pot did was wrong, because they would then have to admit they were wrong. It was an education, certainly.
But the Buddist way is to never dwell and always look to the future, and I think the people have recovered remarkably well considering. So we prayed for the victims spirits and hoped the spirit of the country would one day prevail against poverty and corruption – there are not many who deserve it more.
Our local guide took us back to his house that evening, his wife cooking us an amazing feast after we played with the kids at the english school he has set up in his own home. In return for dinner we provided a donation to the school, and spent the evening discussing the current Kmer Government and education system, and our guide’s experience during the Pol Pot regime.
It was an amazing insight into Cambodian daily life – there are 42 people living within their wooden slat house, sleeping on straw mats although they are relatively well-off. And damn that family can cook. We stuffed ourselves so stupid we were glad we were sitting on the floor so we could lie down and loosen our belts at the end of the meal.
-Sarah
Sarah